Heading back from Oak Cliff yesterday we took Sylvan Avenue to Irving Boulevard, which meant a stop-off at Trammell Crow Lake at Trinity Park just as the Easter sprinkles were turning torrential. But those days are coming to an end: Per the briefing the council's Trinity River Corridor Project Committee's due to receive at 3 this afternoon, Sylvan Ave. between Irving and Morris Street in West Dallas will be closed come September 1 and then for the next 15 months or so. The reason, for those who've missed it: They're raising the bridge out from between the levees.

Shame too -- it's the best ride in town. Except when it's underwater, which is often. "Floods on average of 4 times per year," says the briefing on the other side. "Closed on average of 3 days per flood event." You've seen the pictures. Pretty!

Anyway.

The new bridge -- elevated and six lanes wide, with room enough for 14-foot bike lanes and six-foot-wide sidewalks in both directions -- was supposed to have been done a long, long time ago: Per an October '08 briefing, the Sylvan Ave. do-over "needs to be ahead of Trinity Parkway, which begins construction mid-2010." (Oh, really?) Price tag keeps changing too: The $48-million project in '08 became a $40-million-ish project last year is now all the way to $57 million, with the city covering $13.64 million and the feds and TxDOT eating the rest.

Says the briefing, crews began work March 28: "installing drilled shafts for bridge columns in the floodway." The Sylvan Avenue boat ramp's also been closed; so too its parking lot, where, as you can see in the click-to-enlarge photo above, a city marshal was parked yesterday (he was either sending priority texts or playing Temple Run, hard to say).

Sylvan Ave. and the park are supposed to be accessible again in December 2013; the boat ramp and parking lot, "early 2014."